batch file to run a query

Dear All,
i need to put a query in a batch file to be easy to use by the user.
jusy only double click on it and it will work.
can any one help?Checkout OSQL.EXE in books on line, that should give you what you need.|||'ISQL' as well as 'OSQL' will do. ISQL is DB-Library applications & OSQL is ODBC oreinted...|||OSQL is OLEDB oriented.|||OLEDB is a successor to ODBC... Such online command tools should be downward compatible... thats why its said ODBC oriented...

http://db.ittoolbox.com/documents/document.asp?i=2412

If you check Sql Server Books Online for OSQL u could see the below infrm...

"The osql utility uses the ODBC database application programming interface (API). It is a replacement for the isql command prompt utility based on the DB-Library API. "|||But how do you assign the result of query to a DOS variable?

for example, how do you assign the result of this query (select top 1 name from employee where empname = 'John') to a DOS variable in a batch program? I read that the use of EXIT with osql returns the result but when I tried to use it, it gave some errors. Does anyone has an exmaple?|||I think that only works for integers;
"You can use the result of a SELECT statement as the return value from isql. The first column of the first result row is converted to a 4-byte integer (long). MS-DOS passes the low byte to the parent process or operating-system error level. "

If it's processing strings you want, I guess you'll need to use an output file and read the file from the batchfile (and delete it afterwards).|||How do you do the dos variable assignment if the select is changed to (select count(*) from employee where empname = 'John'). In this case the result will be integer.

Say, I want to check if an employee already exists in a table.

set /p emp='osql -S DBServ -U sa -P passwd -d master -Q "EXIT(select count(*) from employee where empname = 'John')"'
if "%emp%"=="1" goto :EmpFound

It gives me an error - "count(*) was unexpected at this time".|||Depending on your tolerance for pain, you can get assign SQL result set values to environment variables, but there are better answers. Look at Perl (http://www.perl.org/) or KIX (http://www.kixtart.org/) for examples.

-PatP|||I am just trying to modify some pre-existing dos batch scripts and can't use perl.
I am surprised that a simple variable assignment in dos batch script (from osql single value result) is such a complicated thing!|||This will cause somebody to whirl in their grave, but consider this:echo servername is %sn%
osql -E -S. -Q "DECLARE @.c VARCHAR(1000) SELECT @.c = 'SET sn=' + @.@.servername PRINT @.c" >c:\temp\sqlvoodo.bat
call c:\temp\sqlvoodoo.bat
echo servername is %sn%-PatP